Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/142

130 In connection with the beliefs reported above from Nova Scotia, it is worth noting that the Montreal Gazette of Mar. 10, 1915, reported the trial, on a charge of pretending to use witchcraft, of an old negress, one Fanny Dismal, at Guysboro in that province. "The evidence taken at the preliminary hearing showed that the belief in witches and witchcraft is still strong at Guysboro. If anyone became stricken with disease that did not immediately respond to medical treatment, the friends of the patient began to think 'the witches are at work' and Fanny Dismal was called in to 'take witches off.'

"The woman's efforts were directed to discover if the patient were bewitched, who it was bewitched him, and if she could make a cure. The modus operandi of her incantations … was given in evidence to the court. It included the use of a Bible and a key.

"The distinction of 'putting the witches on' and 'taking them off' was repeatedly impressed upon the magistrate. Her witnesses claimed that Fanny only took the witches off, and that therefore her incantations were praise-worthy."

''American beliefs. Devil child.''—The same paper, on Oct. 30, gave an account of the excitement aroused "among thousands of the less enlightened residents of Chicago" by the supposed advent of a devil-child, "duly equipped with horns and a tail." The story, as told to Miss Jane Addams, was that an Italian woman in a slum district had announced that she "would rather have a devil than a baby," as she already had seven children. When the infant arrived, "it had horns and a tail, and could talk. When the baby saw its mother it shook its finger at her and said, 'You wanted a devil, and you have got one. If you kill me six others will come. "Whatever its origin," the paper adds, "the report is credited by thousands, and the 'devil child's' powers are dreaded. According to one version, the father was killed at the sight of it." (Cf. vol. xxiv. p. 360.)

Dream divination, Virginia.—The McGill Daily of Jan. 9, 1914, quoted from the Washington Post the following saying as being current in Virginia: